Portland Has Lost the Springwater Trail to the Homeless

Dumpsters and Porta Potties between 82nd and 92nd on the Springwater Trail

By Lars Larson

“I’ve had incidents with my children where people [throw] bottles at us, running at us with wolverine knives duct taped onto their hands.”

That’s the way Joe Kurmaskie sums up his decision to cancel his summertime bicycle camp for kids called “Camp Creative: No Child left inside”.

Kurmaskie styles himself as “mark twain on two wheels”. He’s offered the bicycle camp along with the parks department the past four summers, but not this year. Bums and druggies and street dwellers who’ve set up camp along the Springwater make it too dangerous in Kurmaskie’s view.

I think the tolerance of Northwest cities for street people puts us all at greater risk; human waste, drug dealing, drug use, assaults and all the rest. The reaction of the liberals who run the big cities is to roll out the welcome mat for the street creeps to the detriment of everyone else.

And before you blame the sharp increase in housing prices lately, tell me why ten years ago there were a couple of thousand so called homeless…and today, with gigantic jumps in rents…we still have a couple of thousand living on the streets.

Producer Tony commutes by bike a few days a week. He recorded this video along the Springwater trail near 82nd.